Actor Takes Another Swing At Theater

THEATER

With The Baseball Comedy Rounding Third, Rus Blackwell Bats In A New Troupe.

July 16, 2004|By Elizabeth Maupin, Sentinel Theater Critic

At lunch one day, Rus Blackwell breaks open a fortune cookie.

"You won't be bored long," the message says. "New adventures are on the way."

No kidding. Blackwell, one of the most sought-after actors in Orlando, has just finished directing one project, and this day of the lunch, he's in the middle of starting another -- a whole new theater company, Red Moon Theatre Joint, with its opening production just days off.

He doesn't have time to be bored.

With the opening Wednesday of Rounding Third, a baseball comedy by Richard Dresser, Blackwell is crossing familiar territory -- putting together another new theater group from scratch. One of the founders of Mad Cow Theatre and Soulfire Traveling Medicine Show and a familiar face on half a dozen local stages, Blackwell once again is following his instinct wherever it might lead.

This time around, that means producing Rounding Third and also playing one of the two roles. It's a show he describes as "a grown-up comedy about life and Little League." But it also means trying one more time to establish an audience for something new, something he hopes local audiences will embrace.

That something may be akin to the work Soulfire did -- Faith Healer, Killer Joe, The Lonesome West and others -- before it branched off into an abortive dinner-show business that was meant to provide paying work for actors but wound up bleeding its producers dry.

Blackwell's partner in Soulfire, John DiDonna, has committed himself to working at Theatre Downtown and on a dinner-theater cruise in Sanford. So Blackwell is heading in a different direction.

What that direction is, he can't quite say.

"I just kind of do things intuitively," he says. "I just kind of know when it's right."

Red Moon's first shows will be housed at Orlando Repertory Theatre, the old Civic Theatre where Blackwell first captured the audience's attention 15 years ago with a fiery performance in the drama Burn This. Rounding Third will be performed in the Rep's little Tupperware Theatre Wednesday through Aug. 1, and Blackwell has arranged for four more shows to be produced in the Tupperware in the coming season.

He'll pick those shows from what he calls a short list of 10-12 plays: "some titles that people haven't heard, some that might be a little more romantic.

"I'd like to pick a season and talk to people I know and say, `Where do you see yourself here?' There's a ton of talented people out there, a ton of people I'd like to work with."

For starters, there are Trudy Bruner, who is directing Rounding Third; Mark Ferrera, who is the other cast member; and Brook Hanemann, who is the assistant director and all-round support staff.

Their first vehicle is the 2002 comedy by Dresser, the playwright known hereabouts for the surrealistic workplace comedy Below the Belt, an Orlando Theatre Project production in 1999.

In Rounding Third, Dresser is in a sunnier mood: The play chronicles the antic collision between two Little League coaches, one an ex-jock who believes in winning at all costs and the other a know-nothing dad who thinks playing ball is about having fun.

One goal, it seems, is another Killer Joe, the raunchy comedy-drama that was a huge hit for Soulfire in the summer of 2001. With its hilariously dark portrait of a white-trash family, Killer Joe attracted a diverse audience, from college students to much older people, and it established the idea that Central Florida audiences don't mind being shocked.

"We won't be afraid to do stuff that has naked people and chicken-throwing," Blackwell says, referring to a couple of the dominant elements in Killer Joe, "as long as it's a good play that speaks to people. . . . With Killer Joe, we proved that there's an audience out there."

In the search for that audience, Red Moon is starting small once again. Soulfire went into business with Faith Healer on $500 out of his and DiDonna's pockets, Blackwell says, and Rounding Third may not be a lot more complicated.

"I've learned a lot along the way," Blackwell says. "Even from the dinner show, I didn't realize how much that taught me from a business perspective."

Still, he counts on luck, circumstance and his instincts to show Red Moon the way.

"I really follow my gut," he says. "The right things just sort of fall into place."